


i'm fascinated by you

by cettevieestbien



Series: semi/modern stucky [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien Powers, Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bucky Barnes' SPACE arm, Bucky is a good alien, Gen, HYDRA was a planet, Vision is God, all speak!Steve and Thor, alternate universe - NASA, astronaut!Peter Quill, bad grammar that's purposeful, learning a language, lonely but good, possible future stucky? maybe?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4049230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cettevieestbien/pseuds/cettevieestbien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's favorite planet is the little blue one in Heimdall's star's habitable zone. The life on the planet was enthralling, but he had no intention of contacting the planet, due to Dottie's rules. But then Vision, the leader of the universe, meddled, and forced Bucky to play his hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. intro

Bucky is used to often being alone. He walks the stars, asteroids and planets alone, unless he speaks with his friends. He observes and explores black holes alone. The others of his kind, Wade, Natalia, Logan, Dottie, Wanda and Pietro, do not bother him, nor see him. It's a rule - and he's not very friendly, and they're not, either, so it works out for them all.

There is a star, though, inhabited by a sun nymph named Heimdall, that Bucky likes to visit. One of the planets that orbit his star, the blue one in the habitable zone, has life that enthralls Bucky.

No other planet with life has life like that planet - Heimdall calls it Earth. Bucky thinks it’s cute. He pulls asteroids out of their paths so they instead orbit the small planet instead of smashing into it.

The life on the planet is fragile, Heimdall tells him.

The life on the planet - they call themselves humans - are explorers. They send machines into space, and Bucky walks alongside them sometimes. He likes to pet them, and send transmissions back home that none of the humans understand.

He has duties, though, so he doesn’t often visit the planet. He remembers seeing the planet, before, when it had large creatures wiped out by an asteroid, or comet. He can't quite remember.

Bucky doesn’t like the total death of life. He was only the way he was because of total death.

He comes from a planet long-since gone, that held near-immortals that could live in space, walk through it like they could walk on solid ground. His planet had been called Hydra, Red Room, Department X, Shield. It had had many names. They punished their children for being weak, for showing anything they didn’t like.

Punishment was being sent to the stars. You could return to the planet sometimes, though not always.

Dottie was originally the only one in space, left there simply because of her attitude. By the time the rules had changed, she had made a life for herself away from the planet, and didn’t return, despite the opportunity to.

She killed many of those who entered space, for various reasons no one knew - Brock, namely, and Seth, too, and Alexander for sure. Arnim and Johann were the first she did in. But she had liked Bucky, and Logan, who came after them. Maybe it was because of their young ages. They didn’t know.

But they were grateful to live at all. Dottie was like their mother, or queen, and sent them off to explore and live in eternal aloneness.

Not many of the Agents - those from his planet - in space actually followed that rule, though.

Bucky was especially not the only one to break the rules. Wanda and Pietro, they were brother and sister, and they were together often. Logan spoke to a planet of powered creatures much like the humans, and had relationships with a few of them.

Wade liked to talk to sun nymphs whenever he could, especially Kate and Clint and Peter.

Natalia also liked Clint, but she spoke often with the moon nymph Phil, and the black hole nymph named Nick, who watched over a galaxy Bucky had never been to. The one where his favorite planet resided was ruled by two black hole nymphs - Maria and Sharon. He didn’t know them well. He stayed in the outer reaches of their galaxy when he was visiting Heimdall.

There was something they all had for themselves. Bucky was the one who was the most alone.

He wasn’t always alone, though, not really. He spoke to the sun nymph Rocket, and his closest moon nymph Groot whenever he could. He sweet-talked Jan and Hank into stretching their orbits.

But Earth. He was fascinated by it, more than the other planets, and he didn’t even speak to it.

He hadn’t ever planned on speaking to it, either. But that changed when Vision, the leader of space, forced him to speak to the planet or face eternity with the ashes of his planet and his people.

* * *

Steve technically worked for NASA. But he wasn’t an astronomer, astrophysicist or even computer-guy. He was there, really, to translate.

Only he and one other guy, Thor, could translate any language they heard, and once NASA had seen him do his magic, they had made up a new job and hired him on the spot. Then, they hired Thor at Steve’s request, since Thor was a friend of Steve's, and he was better than Steve himself was.

He didn’t have a lot of work - mostly, he sat with Jane, or Thor, or Tony. Matt and Foggy talked to him sometimes, and Peter Quill liked to tell Steve stories of space, since he was a veteran astronaut. He'd been to space three times.

Bruce and Betty never said much to him, but Gamora and Gwen and even Pepper liked to seek him out. He considered them all good friends of his.

He didn't see them often, because they worked in places he usually wasn't. Besides, everyone seemed a lot busier than him.

The day that it happened had been one of those days that everyone, even Thor, was busy, except him. He was just sitting by Jane’s screens, drawing a cartoon version of what he saw and adding in little green aliens with big eyes and no mouths, when Skye burst in.

Darcy lifted her head, questioning where Jane hadn’t even noticed the arrival. Skye pointed to Steve, and beckoned him out of the room, unable to stop panting.

“Oh my God,” she said after a moment, seemingly catching her breath once they were down the hall. “We just got a transmission, and it sounds like a voice, Steve. It even repeats some stuff. We’ve never gotten anything like this!” She squealed.

Steve grinned, excited and breathless, now, too.

 **  
** “What are you waiting for?” He asked her, starting to turn his fast-walk into a jog. “C’mon!”


	2. act i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> italicized speaking is meant to convey that they're speaking an alien language

“ _I am hurt. I need medical help. I am hurt. Can you help me?_ ” Steve heard over the transmission line the second he got into the room. It was playing loud over the speakers, and everyone could hear it.

He paled, and immediately had scientists and astronauts and everyone else jumping down his throat, demanding to know what was being said. “They’re saying that they’re hurt,” he hissed out, and lunged forward, toward the control panel.

Steve took a moment to calm himself as best as he could, then did what he had never done before.

He took the microphone, listened to the words again, and said, “ _I help._ ” He didn’t know how to say anything else in the language that could be of use, really.

“ _You understand me? No jokes?_ ”

“ _No jokes,_ ” Steve promised.

“ _I need to land somewhere. I am hurt, you see. My arm and my chest, they are… they are wounded. Where may I land, human?_ ”

Steve swallowed, and tried to decipher the alphabet the alien was using. The use of the word human was unsettling, but he powered through it.

“ _My…_ ” he struggled to find the right word. He could only use the words he’d heard been spoken out loud - he couldn’t make up new words out of nowhere.

“ _Place? Observatory? Hospital?_ ” There was a quick pause, then, “ _You are having trouble understanding me. Would you rather we speak in a different language?_ ”

“You speak different languages?” Steve burst out. There was a loud screech behind him, probably coming from one of the mob listening in. He could hear ‘what the fuck’ being said behind him at least six times.

“Yes, but not well. And you humans have many, is hard to track.”

“Oh my god,” Steve breathed in awe, then tried to get back on track. They had to help this ET get down to Earth for medical help, assuming they even could. “Uh, what do you see?”

“Land. I see land.” There was a thud, and Steve looked behind him to see someone had fainted. He didn’t blame them - he was on his way to that point, too.

“Good. That’s good - do you see the land mass that’s really long, and thin in the middle, but wide above and below that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, try to get a little closer to that, please.”

After a beat of silence, the alien said, “ _I sense one my people nearing. I am not to see them_.” Steve was about to ask why not when the voice said, “oh! I have yet introduce myself. I am Bucky.”

“Bucky, huh?” Steve asked, ignoring the loud freaking-out noises behind him (“It has a name! It has a name!”). “Well, I’m Steve.”

“Steve. That was name of a hero. He was in stories we told our young.”

“What’d he do?”

"He lived longer than any other Agent. He helped people, and overcome the wrongness in our government. I have not thought Steve since child."

"Childhood?" Steve asked, knowing he liked help with his own grammar. He looked over to the monitors, and saw that the satellites were taking a video of what was over both North and South America. "Uh, Bucky? You said you had arms, right?"

"Yes. One is... stardust. But yes."

"Your arm is made of stardust?!" Tony shrieked from behind Steve, louder than the rest of the squealing and eeee-ing noises, and even though Bucky shouldn't have been able to hear him, the alien laughed.

"Yes, human, it is," he sounded like a human himself when he laughed. "My brother, Arnim, before his death, cut the origin off. Dottie made one of stardust."

"Okay," Steve cut in before Tony could go any further. "Could you wave, please? Do you know how to do that?"

"Yes. I have not... waved in hundred Earth years. I wave now." There was a pause, then….

Fitz looked up from his monitor, and said, "I got 'im!"

The screen was clicked to a smaller part of the sky, and you could make out a vague figure waving a hand.

"Bucky, we see you! You can stop waving now." The figure’s hand stopped waving, but it stayed raised up. The head of the figure tilted backwards, then turned almost completely around.

" _My brother approaches. Dottie will be angry if he reports this._ How am I land, Steve?"

It's so odd, hearing an alien speak Steve's name, but he gets out of his funk quickly.

"Uh, okay, like I said - the land that looks like an hourglass - uh, wide, thin, wide? Go towards the top wide part. There are going to be lots of satellites around there, but go to the one with the flashing blue light."

"Satellites? Are they like other machines? The one of the red planet is much cute."

Steve had to bite off a laugh at how adorable Bucky's broken dialect was. Aliens aren't adorable, Steve thought, but looking at him on the monitor, Steve knows that this one is.

"It sings itself happy birthday. Did you know that?" Steve watched as the picture of Bucky on the screen came closer to the satellite.

"Birthday?"

"You don't have birthdays on...?" Bucky seemed to understand he was asking for the name of his home planet.

"Call it Red Room. It long gone, Steve. I left in child... hood."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Bucky. Are you getting any closer? We should be able to get you on the ground soon if you can see the building by the satellite. How close are you?"

There was a crash.

"That answers that question," Steve said to himself before they all ran outside.

* * *

Bucky had gotten too close to the machine.

He knew that the moment he crashed into it. He'd crashed into lots of things, but the satellite was by far the worst thing.

Even crashing into stars and planets were better than that satellite. And he expected that it would be costly. Heimdall had informed him of human currency, the many types.

Heimdall was like his teacher, like Arnim had been when they were young.

He wondered if Steve would teach him as well. There were two humans Bucky had spoken to - the unnamed one and Steve.

He has wanted his first communication to the planet a little more special than a call for help.

But Vision had taken his arm of stardust and nearly ripped it off his shoulder in the place he held meetings. (Or "meetings," really, because asking for one and then heavily injuring the person couldn't count as a real meeting.) And then transported him to the little solar system that held his planet. Well, not his planet.

Just the blue planet that orbited a tiny star in a tiny galaxy far from his home.

The first thing that happens to him on that little blue planet is him losing his balancein the atmosphere and toppling over, and then falling head-first into what Steve said was a satellite. The second thing is him making an odd noise.

The oxygen of the planet was more than he had consumed in memory. He was used to the oxygen-less space that he lived in, not this hard ground and insane levels of air. He didn’t need the oxygen, but it tasted delicious.

He’s gasping, taking in more air than he has in the last several hundred years, and trying not to whine out loud - his arm hurt, even if he could only just feel it - when a face appears above his. The face is pale, and encased by blonde hair. The face has blue eyes.

“You’re Bucky?” The face says, moving it’s mouth, and Bucky watches, because there are a lot of species he knows that don’t speak out of mouths. The face turns kind of red. “I’m Steve. Listen, we’re gonna get you help, okay? We’re just gonna put you up on this thing called a gurney, and it’ll hold you up. We can carry the gurney with you on it to the place where we’re going to help you.”

There are people standing around them, he notices. Staring at them, or staring at him, more likely. Heimdall had told him that Earth had not been visited by anyone since before the start of their history.

“But, uh, look…. You have to be peaceful and cooperative, or we’ll assume you're a threat, and do something none of us want, alright?”

“I…” Bucky gasped in again, smiling. The oxygen hurt less, now, and it felt amazing. It felt like seeing a nebula for the first time again. He nodded his head slightly, then frowned when people around them started to push something under him.

"It's okay," Steve soothed him. He hadn't been comforted or soothed or anything like that since he was a child. "That's the gurney. It goes under you."

"Oh."

“Yeah, so you’ll be okay if they put it under you?” Steve asked, making eye contact with both Bucky and the ones who were trying to get him on it. Bucky hesitantly nodded, and Steve nodded to the three. They looked so much like his own people.

Bucky wasn't usually nostalgic. It had been so, so long since he had had a planet of his own. So long since he'd seen the last of his people.  These humans looked exactly like Agents.  

He knew they weren't, though. Heimdall had told him about how they died without oxygen, how they lived so short of lives. How they tore apart their planet and their people and tried to find ways of living away from little Earth.

He knew they were oh so fragile.

"Steve?" He asked, panicked as he was lifted by the thing that was now under him. The only human he knew was Steve. He didn’t want to be without Steve, like he hadn’t wanted to leave his sister, Becca, or Logan when Dottie split them up.

Steve placed a hand on Bucky's shoulder. "It's okay, Buck. Remember, this is a gurney, and we're taking you where you need to be to have help."

Bucky closed his eyes, and swallowed. It had been much easier to talk to Earth when he wasn't on it.

Then something popped out at him. Steve had called him Buck. Nicknames weren't good things on Department X.

He'd been called the Winter Soldier. He'd been feared, even by Natalia, the Black Widow. He didn’t want Steve to fear him.

He opened his eyes again, looking for Steve immediately. He hadn’t been right next the Bucky like he’d expected.

He found him a second later, not too far behind Bucky and the humans carrying him away from the satellite.

He breathed out a sigh of relief, but then noticed that carbon dioxide left him when he did. He scrunched up his nose, trying to remember if Heimdall had said if this was normal or not.

“Steve?” He asked, deciding he had to know if he was hurting them with his carbon dioxide output. “I… exhale carbon dioxide. Normal or no?”

Bucky wished he spoke the humans’ language better, but he didn’t have a lot of time to learn it.

Steve came forward to walk next to him, and told him, “it’s completely normal for humans. Is it for your people?”

Bucky shook his head. “We not need breathe. It is… benefit, not neces-?” He cut off, not knowing how to say the word he was trying to use.

“Necessary?” Steve helped.

“Yes.”

“That’s really cool, Bucky. Humans have to breathe oxygen, or we die.” He almost sounded put-out.

Bucky nodded. “Yes, I know. Humans, much fragile. Need perfect conditions to… survive, yes?”

“Yep.” Steve paused, looking at Bucky’s arm. He spared it another glance, wincing as he saw the rip from his shoulder. It had started to hurt less, because it was sewing itself back on, but still, it was tender, and he disliked heavy pain like this. Then, Steve offered, “I could help you with English, if you want? You’re having trouble with it. And maybe you could teach me your language, too?”

Bucky nodded, and said, “you understood me well, you just didn’t know any words. I, at least, do know some of your words. You just repeated mine back to me in different patterns.”

“I had to! I could only understand the words you had spoken! I can’t just make up my own words for a pre-existing language, dummy.”

Bucky stiffened. Another nickname.

Steve caught on, and made a confused noise. “What? You don’t want to be called dumb, or something? If you don’t, I won’t, I was just teasing.”

  
“Teasing?” Bucky had to sound out the word. He had never heard of teasing before.


	3. act ii

Bucky proved to be a quick learner. Steve found that he was a dream learning the English language, and, because Steve was fluent and he wanted to test out Bucky's skills, French.

He seemed completely unaware of how much in awe literally everyone was. He looked human-like, and he was beautiful.

His arm was the center of the Bucky Show, though. It was literally a galaxy, shaped like a muscled arm that was identical to his other. You could see the tiny little stars and planets. He said there was life in his arm, a gift from "Dottie."

He hadn’t said who Dottie was, who had nearly ripped his own little galaxy away from him, who it was that he had sensed. But he’d talked about some of the nymphs he saw, and was friends with.

He explained things with such attention to detail, and with enough passion to power a skyscraper. He was sat in a hospital-like bed, and he constantly had a crowd listen to him tell his stories.

He made sure Steve was there the whole time. He figured Bucky was clinging to him for a reason, but he couldn’t figure it out.

The higher ups had Steve ask Bucky questions after Bucky had mostly taught Steve his language, and Bucky was fortunately cooperating.

Steve asked Bucky how he felt about the news finding out about him.

“They haven’t yet, have they?” Bucky asked, sounding out the contraction.

Steve shook his head. “No, not yet, but my bosses are thinking about telling people. You’re so nice and not-threatening to all the workers here, they’re thinking about it for real.”

“Oh… well, I guess it would not be so bad. But I want to heal first.”

“Oh, yeah, of course. Duh,” Steve said, flopping back in his seat. “Oh, hey, do you mind if I sketch you?”

“Like a portrait?”

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t have colors.”

“Alright.”

* * *

The arm took a few days to heal. Apparently, when saturated in oxygen, his body acted odd, and healed much slower than usual.

While he was still in bed, and Steve was drawing a second picture of him, he was visited by a man named Mr. Lee. He was Steve’s boss.

He let Steve stay in the room, though. No one had forced Steve to leave, though Bucky was persuading him to stay like he persuaded comets and asteroids to leave their orbits.

He asked a few questions, and Bucky stayed civil. He had no reason not to be - the humans had shown him kindness, so he would reciprocate that kindness back to them. And he had no intentions of hurting them, even if they weren’t as nice - his power was enough to wipe the planet off the face of the universe.

Just before Mr. Lee left, Bucky asked, “will I get to see what Earth looks like up close? From the sun, it is too far away to see little things. I am fascinated.”

The man looked surprised, and Bucky wondered why. “I don’t see why not,” the elderly - as Steve had said, though the man’s age didn’t compare to Bucky’s - human said lightly.

Bucky grinned, knowing it was bright as starshine, and waved to Mr. Lee as he finally went through the door back into the hallway.

 


End file.
